It is well-known that wireless transmission is noisy and typically suffers from deep fades, which may last up to several hundreds of milliseconds. As such, it is likely that data packets transmitted over a wireless transmission link during adverse transmission conditions will need to be retransmitted one or more times. It can be appreciated that frequent retransmission of data packets decreases the throughput of a wireless transmission link. It can also be appreciated that stopping the retransmission of data packets whenever the transmission window closes also decreases such throughput.
Moreover, in a reverse mode (from a host receiver to a user transmitter) information that is transmitted from the host to the user is often preempted by a status packet noting which packets were received correctly and/or incorrectly by the receiver. As such, the bandwidth of the reverse transmission path that may be used for the transmission of information is decreased by the transmission of status packets. In some applications, such a decrease may be acceptable. However, when a high level of sustained duplex throughput is required, then such a decrease may not be acceptable.